The tactics behind the beautiful game have always moved in cycles, each innovation being a reaction and an attempt to break the status quo.

But whilst forward-thinking managers have the ability to change football in an instant with bold tactical calls that soon become adopted by their contemporaries, players who are moulded to specific roles over careers that can span two decades aren’t quite so privileged. Amid those tactical cycles, fantastic talent is inevitably left behind.

Craig Bellamy’s insightful appearance on Monday Night Football in December 2015 provided the perfect case in point. Beginning his career with Norwich City in 1996, Bellamy emerged during an era in which two up front was the cardinal rule of English football. Little-n-large combos, such as Kevin Phillips and Niall Quinn, or in some cases large-n-large such as Alan Shearer and Chris Sutton, ruled supreme.

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Bellamy was one such little, his task being to play off the target man; to make runs wide and in behind and to capitalise on every successful knockdown from his attacking accomplice.

That simple-yet-effective strategy which had dominated English football since the 1960s saw Bellamy become one of the Premier League’s most valued forwards, to the extent that he was signed by eight Premier League clubs throughout his career at a combined cost of £52.3million - big money for a player who started out in the mid-1990s.

But the most prolific campaign of Bellamy’s career, 13 goals in 27 appearances for Blackburn Rovers in 2005/06, would be the last in which he truly enjoyed that role. At the start of the season previous, Jose Mourinho and Didier Drogba arrived at Chelsea - a player and manager who changed the tactical landscape of the Premier League for the next twelve years.

Mourinho brought with him a change in philosophy to 4-3-3, the influence of which is impossible to overstate, and Drogba was the new breed of towering lone front-man he needed to put it into action.

Whilst the rest of the Premier League, including Arsenal’s reigning champions The Invincibles, still followed the two-up-front principle with their own idiosyncratic variations, Mourinho opted for an extra body in midfield instead - and the results were staggering.

It not only made Chelsea more solid defensively, conceding a record low 15 times during Mourinho’s first season in charge, but also gave them greater control of the midfield and consequently the ball.

Teams lining up in 4-4-2 meanwhile, found themselves gradually pinned back until Chelsea’s machine-like style made resistance futile. It not only established the Blues as the leading Premier League force, but also left Arsene Wenger in Mourinho’s tactical shadow - something he’s only recently managed to escape from.

By the time Bellamy moved to Manchester City in January 2009, lone front-men had already become the norm in the Premier League and by the time he’d retired and become a guest pundit on Monday Night Football around 18 months ago, all but three Premier League sides had started with just one striker during the previous weekend’s round of fixtures.

As the Welshman explains, Manchester City was where he was finally pushed to change his role by the division-wide belief in one up front - that one having to be the complete centre-forward, combining aerial prowess and hold-up play with a consistent supply of goals.

Accordingly, Bellamy transitioned from an increasingly irrelevant small striker into a goalscoring winger, even pushing City’s then-record signing Robinho out of the team to net ten times from out wide during his only full season at the Etihad Stadium.

But other players weren’t quite so lucky. Jermain Defoe is regarded as one of the greatest finishers of the Premier League era, but he’s also made the third-most substitute appearances in Premier League history specifically because managers feared for his inability to provide a physical foothold in the final third. It’s undoubtedly affected his England career, not to mention his chances of joining one of the division’s regular title winners.

At youth level too, one can only imagine the number of poachers who, in the second half of the noughties, suddenly found themselves redundant upon graduating to senior football in favour of big and burly, brutish alternatives.

Of course, the most talented players will always be adaptable to different roles. But by the time the process of transitioning to a new position is finished, careers may already be over through lack of opportunities.

Twelve years on from Mourinho and Drogba’s arrivals, the tactical dynamics of the Premier League are changing once again - this time instigated by the former’s successor at Stamford Bridge Antonio Conte. 3-4-3 had long-been considered alien to the English game and particularly its top clubs, but after Conte introduced it in late September, catalysing the Blues’ rise to the top of the table, every club in the top seven had attempted it or a variation on at least one occasion in the league by the end of the season.

In fact, only three clubs didn’t attempt it at all and after a humbling defeat to Crystal Palace, Wenger selected his first non-back-four line-up since his debut season as Arsenal manager.

And with the 3-4-3 revolution showing little sign of relenting, you have to wonder what will be the next breed of player that gets left behind. The formation itself is currently much more universal than it may initially sound - we saw full-backs at outside centre-half, forwards at wing-back and attacking midfielders at inside forward throughout last season - but as it becomes embraced more and more, the players involved will inevitably become increasingly specialised.

Defensive full-backs are already on the fringes of extinction, but central No.10s like Mesut Ozil who were the heartbeat of 4-5-1 setups a few years ago could be pushed out by 3-4-3 as well. Ironically, the presence of three up front, albeit two deeper-lying, actually diminishes the need for a powerful, central target man too.

Some of those players, like Bellamy, will be able to adapt to the new demands. Others, however, will inevitably fade away and join the long list of footballers who never quite made it.